Tom writes:
>His apology, as quoted in the Globe, was specifically to any Americans he might
>have offended by his comments. I have seen no indication that he has expressed
>any regrets to the Swedes.
 
Well, we do not know if he said anything to Swedish writers for printing
in their papers or if he contacted S.E. Sold directly to apologize, so it
is useless speculating.  I have to add that Donatelli was not asked about
this.  He raised the issue *himself* on Saturday, indicating to me that he
was sincere about his apology and had been thinking about it.
 
Also consider that in talking to American writers, he likely believed his
audience (the readers) to be Americans and not Swedes.  He's not a brilliant
speaker and I doubt he knew exactly what he was going to say until he said
it.  But the key thing remains to me that he said it.  I doubt he expected
his apology to be dissected in an attempt to determine if he really meant
it or not.  I think Brian Jopling will agree with me that unlike some people,
Donatelli is quite an honest guy in that he isn't going to tell you
something if he doesn't mean it.  I think he did mean what he said Friday -
but that he wasn't rational when he said it.  People do that all the time.
The next day, he came out on his own and apologized - and he wouldn't have
done that if he didn't mean it.
 
>                          I think Team USA's behaviour in this tournament
>was an embarassment to this country, and personally I was more disappointed
>with the team than I would have been had they failed to win a game.
 
I completely disagree.  The only incident on which I found fault with them was
their criticism of Sold after they lost to EUN, and as I said I didn't put
much weight on it because it was clearly an emotional rather than a
rational response, and also Donatelli apologized for it the next day.  (I
think Dave's interpretation of his quoted remarks is about the same way I
had looked at it, although I see how it can be taken differently.)  I put
the blame on the press, who continued to discuss it 3-4 days later while
a lot of people had probably forgotten it.  Even Stephen Harris of the
Herald (?) said Monday night on the radio that the press had blown that
out of proportion and ignored the real story which was the Unified Team.  But
as I said, they had been looking for something to nail these guys on and
they finally found it.  I'm not the only one who believes this - I've heard
at least two media people admit this since last Friday, one being Harris
and I forget the other.
 
One of the big problems with the press is harping on things they *think*
people care about.  Like Dan Jansen.  Yes, we wanted to see how he did, but
we did not want to see every ten minutes an interview where some meathead
CBS person is asking him how disappointed he feels.  I would have preferred
that they leave the guy alone, and I bet most of America felt that way too.
ABC annoyed me in 1988 when they did this to him, but CBS was even worse.
 
 
- mike